Striving for the old-fashioned American dream…one chicken at a time….LOL

Christmas in July

I love Christmas. No, seriously, I LOVE CHRISTMAS! Before I went to work full time teaching, I decorated every room in our home for Christmas. I put up 26 fully decorated Christmas trees (starting on November 1st). I had a Christmas Control Journal in a 3″ wide binder, and it was FULL of plans and ideas and pictures torn from magazines (now I have Pinterest for all of that LOL). I had gift wrap parties (bring your gifts and wrap them here with friends and make some fun tags using my Cricut). I had cookie deco parties for my kids and all their friends.

I miss doing all those things SO MUCH!!! It just seems like with work that the season is upon me so quickly and so little of what I want to do actually gets done. I want this year to be different. I want to do several of the old things I used to do and not feel overwhelmed or stressed planning them while working.

There are just less than six months until Christmas 2014. It’s time to start planning now! Today is my Christmas Planning Day in July 2014!!! Woohoo!!!

I got out my old binder and flipped through it. I don’t decorate as much now and that’s more due to having simpler tastes than not having enough time. I already took stock of my ornaments and deco this past Christmas while decorating and have the bin numbers and what’s in the bins in a note on my phone (the Note 3 is the best.phone.EVER!!!).

I took quick stock of my gift wrap situation and picked a color theme for it for this year (snowmen, Santa, and traditional red/green color scheme).

I forgot how helpful my binder really is. I have gift lists in here for everyone I bought or made gifts for since 2000!!! I have dinner menus and party plans in here for all those years as well.

I also found the Holiday Grand Plan in my binder (cue the Hallelujah chorus!). This is a 14 week plan to prep for Christmas. It includes cleaning, decluttering, organizing, decorating, and gift buying. I am going to stretch it out into 24 weeks which will give me extra time due to work (once it starts back up next month.).

Christmas 2014 is going to be AWESOME!!! With all this advance prep, how can it not be?